TODD SEAVEY
author of Libertarianism for Beginners and writer of/speaker about many other things

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Left Gone Mad: 10 Political Thoughts After Convention Week

1. Nearby, four
hip images with quasi-libertarian implications, all photos by me except for
the Constitution tattoo (and below: a link to my appearance on the comparably
hip show Rew and Who?):

•the Constitution
on a back (from the Facebook page of a woman, not necessarily the one
possessing the tattoo, who appears to be both a Ron Paul activist and an Occupy
employee – exactly the sort of person who needs to attend my Sept. 17 Dionysium
at Muchmore’s, a “summit” for both Occupants and Tea Partiers to learn from each
other)

•a photo from a
Foundation for Economic Education event of one of several tattoos I’ve now seen
among libertarians of a cuneiform word for “liberty” (though its meaning
is admittedly complicated somewhat by its “freedom from both slavers and creditors”
implications, as Occupy-affiliated anthropologist David Graeber knows)

•a sidewalk chalk
artist who, on other occasions, has drawn figures including libertarians
such as Hayek on sidewalks near Columbia (I gave him ten bucks)

•a payphone with
both a misspelled anarchist announcement and a pro-life sticker on it and
an ad for a “psychic” in the background – not far, fittingly, from the
McDonald’s that had an Anarchy “A” symbol on its garbage can for a while, the
Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, and the rockabilly- and punk-friendly
bar Otto’s Shrunken Head, where...

Lovely host Rew
Asterik noted, as it happens, that Pete Seeger, the folk musician discussed
at our most recent Dionysium, ended up getting her fired from a teaching gig
because she taught the kids the Seeger song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”
and a line asking “Where have all the husbands gone?” was seen as offensive –
offensively conservative, presumably, given her urban, non-white audience.Pete Seeger: too right-wing for NYC.

3. Speaking of
radicalism, I was pleased by the sheer multi-level right-wingery last night of Rand
Paul, in his GOP convention speech, mentioning an anecdote about Ronald
Reagan that’d been reported by Paul Kengor (the author of the book The Communist, about which I
blogged last month).

Rand Paul gives me
some hope for 2016 and the future of the GOP (after I vote for Libertarian Gary
Johnson in November, no matter how smoothly Romney’s speech tonight goes).Rand Paul’s not perfect, though – so hard to
keep everyone happy – and yesterday I had not only my hardcore anarcho-capitalist
pals but leftist Daniel Radosh complaining about him online, the former usually
over Rand’s endorsement of (necessarily trade-stymieing) sanctions on Iran, the
latter for Rand’s endorsement of the Keystone XL oil pipeline – something that
the anarcho-capitalists, too, joined in criticizing, since it makes some use of
eminent domain.

I will only say that
even if you agree with libertarian Richard Epstein that eminent domain for
truly general-welfare purposes such as roads is acceptable (with compensation
to the displaced, always) but that takings merely for the purpose of giving
property to new private owners are pure theft, something like a pipeline still
presents a sort of grey area (or would that be halfway between a grey area and
a black area – dark grey area?) in that while undeniably enriching private
owners (and customers), it does involve the sort of massively-multi-party
coordination hurdles that for most people serve as an indicator something
warrants public-sector involvement.

I (unlike Rand Paul)
am anarcho-capitalist enough to concede that ideally everything should be done
with no government involvement or private property seizure at all, though.Massive contracts that only go into effect if
every party agrees to a single compensation schedule can be proposed for
projects.When they fail, humanity can –
and will – discover other means.

Rand Paul can spend
the next four years refining his views on all this while Gary Johnson is president,
though.

4. One of the many
offensive-but-meaningless items in the GOP platform is an affirmation of
the importance of NASA, explicitly assumed to be a government program – with
the platform explicitly calling for rethinking the agency instead of “merely”
downsizing government, reports the Space Frontier Foundation.

You know, I have a notorious ex who tried to convince me I
needed to learn from Sorkin how to be witty.I haven’t put that on the schedule just yet.Nor the DVR.

6. The left
isn’t far removed from sounding like that Sorkin scene already, of course.Driven into one of her routine hate-frenzies
of colorful, shallow language by Paul Ryan, the unfunny Maureen Dowd recently wrote:

[Paul Ryan] may look
young and hip and new generation, with his iPod full of heavy metal jams and
his cute kids. But he’s just a fresh face on a Taliban creed – the evermore
antediluvian, anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-gay conservative core. Amiable
in khakis and polo shirts, Ryan is the perfect modern leader to rally medieval
Republicans who believe that Adam and Eve cavorted with dinosaurs.

7. Even crazier (likely
because it was written by a more Gen X-aged and thus farther-degenerated female
leftist) was the recent Ann Friedman piece protractedly likening Ryan to
a bad libertarian (specifically Ayn Rand Objectivist) ex-boyfriend whom one
suspects is not imaginary, though the line between imagination and reality
seems to get blurrier with each new column from an angry female leftist
writer.

I don’t think the
liberal she-hate is leading anywhere productive for any faction, but it is
certainly tempting to encourage them to just let it all out so they get tired and fall asleep.

9. I do not a for a
moment pretend that Paul Ryan can be a full-fledged Catholic and a full-fledged
Objectivist at the same time, but, whatever one might think of him, it should
be no shock that people often have multiple influences.

Amusingly, Ryan
is a bit like a living embodiment of the group I spoke to about Rand two years
ago, the Objectivist Study Group at Yale (OSGAY), since that group prides
itself on sometimes turning Objectivists into Catholics.Subversion or fusionism?Both have their uses.

10. And diversity is
a good thing even in a sect as tiny as libertarianism (and, more
broadly, quasi-libertarianism).So I’m
happy to have Ryan display some Rand influences while the other Rand influences
the GOP even as Gary Johnson bolts it and provides me with someone to vote for
this year.Soon, if all goes well, we’ll
have the enemy – the inhuman practice of governing,
no matter who does it – surrounded.